BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Future Detroit Lions coach Matt Patricia met extensively with the media Wednesday for the second time during Super Bowl week.

He said he wanted to be a pilot at one point in his life, talked again about his admiration for the military and his philosophy on defense.

Here are some select snippets of his 45-minute session with reporters, and here is a link to a partial transcript of his comments from Monday:

Q. What's the meaning of your hat (a camouflage baseball cap with a skull and crossbones)?

A. "So my hat currently is actually (the logo for) one of my military buddy's (units). It’s just kind of representing the military and trying to just always be respectful and appreciative and thankful for all they do for us. I think it’s really important."

Q. Did you want to join the military at one point?

A. “That was kind of my initial — my initial passion was planes. That’s obviously why I got into (aeronautical engineering). I wanted to be a pilot, I wanted to fly. It was probably at that right age where Top Gun came out and I was like, 'Yeah, I want to do that.' Quickly found out that wasn’t going to happen. But planes, that’s kind of what was my passion."

A. "I don’t know if I could fit in the cockpit right now. I’m a little too big, currently."

Q. What did you study in college?

A. “I have a degree in aeronautical engineering."

Q. So are you really a rocket scientist?

A. "No, absolutely not. I’m a football coach right now."

Q. What from your education do you use in football?

A. "I talk about it quite a bit just as far as my educational background. I mean, No. 1 for me it just kind of starts with hard work, learning how to problem solve, learning how to analyze stuff. I’m just an analytical type of person, so I don’t think it really has anything to do with football or whatever job I’d be doing, it’s just kind of how I work, I guess from that standpoint. So hard work definitely, school was something that I really had to grind at, I really had to try to spend a lot of time to figure out. There was a lot smarter people at that school than I was, so I had to try to keep up, which maybe was a little bit of the competition coming out, which was good, too."

Q. When people say you have a bend-but-don't-break defense, do you take pride in that or is that offensive?

A. “I would say this. I would say I don’t really have any plays in my defense where I’m saying, 'Hey, like go ahead and get 30 yards, I can live with that.' And you can probably ask my players, they’ll probably agree with that statement. We’re trying to stop them no matter what they do. They’re good on that side of the ball also. I do think for us it’s important, obviously when the team gets to the red area, the game is decided by the scoreboard, not necessarily the stats on a piece of paper, so if we can perform well in the red area, it’s obviously going to help us and our chances to winning, and we know that so we’re going to obviously have a big point of emphasis when it gets down there."

Q. How important is teaching in coaching?

A. "For me, I think it’s the same. I think you’re, as a coach you’re a teacher. You’re trying to teach all different avenues of whether it’s the gameplan, technique. Life, whatever it may be. You’re trying to, teacher, mentor, whatever you want to call it from that standpoint, but I think when you’re in front of the group and you’re presenting, you’re very much at that point teaching, so you’re trying to hit all the different whatever it is, seven senses. So you kind of want to make sure you’re kind of hitting all those as you go through."

A. “I can’t really answer it for the fans. I’ll definitely say this as a defensive coordinator trying to prepare against him, extremely dangerous player. This guy has really shown the ability to make extremely smart decisions, extremely quick decisions, get the ball to the right people, get it out in space quickly. Make check-with-mes at the line of scrimmage. Kind of run and handle the cadence and the operation overall. So obviously a guy that, look, he’s in the last game of the year so he’s obviously doing something right and he’s leading his team in the proper way."

Q. What's the biggest difference in your defense from early in the season until now?

A. “I’d say the biggest difference is probably about four months. I mean I think it’s just the course of the season. I think for us it’s just, hey, where we are now is where we built to. That’s really how it works in the NFL. You have a certain amount of time in the spring, a certain amount of time in training camp, and then you really hit the season pretty quick and then you have to be able to improve as you go through the year. You definitely don’t want to hit September and be playing your all-out best football. You want to build as the course of the year goes. You’re obviously trying to compete at a high level, you’re trying to be where you want to be at the fastest pace possible. But for us we’re trying to make sure that honestly we play our best game here this week, that’s what’s most important."

Q. What did you learn from your first Super Bowl that can help now?

A. "I don’t know if I want to go all the way back. Those early years I was up in the booth, so it’s a little bit different being down on the field. I think just in general, the game itself is a little bit different than the normal regular season game, so just understanding the length of it, the time of it, and you know that there’s going to be things that come up that you’re going to have to deal with, adjust and handle as quickly as possible that maybe again you haven’t seen. So just really trying to make sure everybody stays the course, myself included, and we just keep working through the game. It’s a long game and you have to work the entirety of it."

Q. How do you adjust to all the run-pass option plays that they use?

A. "The RPO is just a very small package of what they do. They do a lot, so you have to read your keys, be disciplined and kind of handle all of it because it is going to change based on the down and distance situation, where they are on the field. So we got to defend everything they do, not just one specific thing."

Q. Did you know what you were getting into when you turned down that job as an engineer to get into coaching?

A. "For me at the time it was a critical point where I had to really kind of make a decision and I think if I didn’t decide to really try to coach at that particular moment I wasn’t going to do it. I think it was such a great opportunity for me that I would have taken that career path and ran, and probably somewhere in the back of my mind said, 'What if I had got into coaching?' For me, originally again it was, the plan was to go back and coach and finish my master’s and if the collegiate level didn’t work out, teach and coach, which was kind of the environment that I grew up in. Like I said, I was really blessed. I rode to school with my dad and my mom when I was real young, and my sisters. I went to work with my parents (who were teachers) every day. And that was just something that was very special to me and going to high school riding to work with my dad every day it was, look, if that was the worst-case scenario that I wound up in I thought that was pretty good."

A. "I think for me the competitive side always kind of kicks in a little bit and I want to try to do it at the highest level, but the opportunities for me that kind of presented themselves, one of the biggest ones for me was to get a chance to go home, to go back to Syracuse and to work for Syracuse University and Coach (Paul) Pasqualoni, which again, growing up in that area was kind of it’s about Syracuse football and Syracuse basketball. So to me that was a great opportunity. And then obviously with New England when they called, tremendous opportunity to come and learn and grow as a coach and be in an unbelievable environment, so you jump at that opportunity."

Q. At any point did you feel you were in over your head?

A. “I mean, every day I feel like I’m in over my head. Currently right now. Yeah, but hey, that’s the fun, right? You kind of battle through it and see if you can succeed."

Q. What do you say when you go through the warm-up line and talk to every player before games?

A. "I think it’s a big opportunity for us to, as a coach for me to, I got to go wish them good luck, I got to just tell them, 'Hey, go out and do everything you can.' Just show the support. A lot of times we deal with our side of the ball a lot, don’t really get a chance to spend some time with the offense. It’s a great team game and you want to go over and just kind of let them know, hey, you got them, you’re thinking about them all the way before they go out and play cause in the end, game day is their day. They go out and play. I can’t play, I can just kind of sit there and watch."

Q. Is this your last game with the Patriots?

A. "This is definitely my last game this year, so I mean that’s what I’m looking forward to hopefully just trying to play really well on Sunday."